Turmoil has not left the offices at ESPN. In fact, it’s about to nab more employees. The sports news giant has announced that more cuts are coming just in time for Christmas (via Fox News):
ESPN is planning another round of layoffs just six months after the network fired more than 100 employees, Sporting News reports.
Multiple sources told the sports news site that 40 to 60 people including on-air talent and radio personalities may be sent packing.
The layoffs could come as soon as late November or early December.
ESPN declined Fox News' request for comment.
According to Sporting News, the production staff and talent of ESPN's "SportsCenter" are facing possible layoffs despite the network's commitment to promoting new editions of the show like "SportsCenter AM" with Sage Steele, Jay Harris and Randy Scott as well as "SC6" with Jemele Hill among others.
The network has been a dumpster fire for quite some time. You had the firing of Curt Schilling over his snarky remarks about transgender bathrooms, longtime anchor Linda Cohn was suspended for suggesting that the failing subscriptions to ESPN could be partially attributed to the network’s dabbling in politics, and then there was the Asian-American announcer, Robert Lee, who was pulled from his original assignment, the University of Virginia vs. the College of William and Mary football game, because his name was too similar to that of the Confederate general.
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Former reporter Britt McHenry noted that she was barred from even liking tweets that were conservative. ESPN host Jemele Hill skated away from being fired after she tweeted that President Trump was a white supremacist. She was later suspended (with pay) for promoting a boycott of the Dallas Cowboys. Some employees have quietly said that they pretend to be Democrats to keep their jobs.
It’s all about standards. If you make fun of transgender bathrooms, like Schilling, and get fired, but get off scot-free after calling the president a white supremacist—something is off. That’s the standard: you don’t get suspended for calling Trump that, but if you say politics might be one of the reasons why the network is losing subscriptions (10 million over the past five years), you get put in the doghouse. That’s absurd—and it seems ESPN is paying for it.
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